


Trudging in a Winter Horrorland

by Enigel



Category: Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
Genre: M/M, Yuletide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-12-25
Updated: 2007-12-25
Packaged: 2017-10-02 02:44:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,152
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Enigel/pseuds/Enigel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Written for Daegaer in the Yuletide 2007 Challenge</p><p>A quintillion thanks to LouiseLux, who helped make this a much better story than it was. All remaining typos, factual errors or outright lies are all mine, and you can't have them.</p>
    </blockquote>





	Trudging in a Winter Horrorland

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Daegaer in the Yuletide 2007 Challenge
> 
> A quintillion thanks to LouiseLux, who helped make this a much better story than it was. All remaining typos, factual errors or outright lies are all mine, and you can't have them.

"You promised me a 'tropical paradise'," said Arthur, pointing an accusatory finger at the landscape before them. He then quickly returned finger and hand to the relative shelter of his pocket.

"See, the mistake lies in promising things in the first place," said Zaphod brightly. "This is against our family values."

Ford glared in the direction of Zaphod's left head.

"Our family has no values, Zaphod."

"Exactly, which is why promises go against them."

"Anyway, we _are_ at the tropics," said Ford. "In fact," he added when an icy (no pun intended) silence followed, "my locator device says we're precisely at 23° 30' longitude north."

The silence crackled and grew icicles on its stern eyebrows.

"Well, all right, I screwed it up. No point in trying to make me feel more guilty than I already do."

"You don't feel guilt," said Arthur.

Ford looked at him in surprise.

"Yes, that's why it would be pointless. Now let's try to make the most out of it and not punish others for your own failings of character."

Arthur opened his mouth in outrage, then decided the tirade he felt coming was not worth the heat he'd lose delivering it to Ford, who would most probably ignore it anyway. A sense of desolation and pointlessness settled upon him and he revelled in it. At least that was familiar. Arthur let it surround him like a blanket as they made their way to the hotel. It did little to warm him, as they trudged on through hilly expanses of snow-covered land, sleighed over smooth expanses of ice-covered lakes and bent through chilly passages carved in the expanse of snow-covered mountains.

The hotel distinguished itself from the snow-covered mounds around it only in that it was intensely blue, under the foot-thick cover of ice, and unlike most of the mounds, it had a door and people milling about it.

The receptionist greeted them in a cheerful tone. Its speakers crackled slightly, which in a humanoid would have given the impression that you were being spoken to by a long-time chain smoker with a bit of a drinking habit. In the android they were currently being addressed by they mostly suggested wear, and Arthur kept a respectful distance from it, in case any circuit got any ideas about self-destruction and explored them in their presence. Marvin was not with them, but his aura of ominous electronic doom hovered around them like a cloud of static.

"May the first couple step forward for check-in," the voice crackled.

Ford tried to grab Arthur and shove the two of them forward, but Zaphod was quicker and had the advantage of numbers, his third hand pushing Ford back in place. Trillian and Zaphod received the card to their room, and then it was Arthur and Ford's turn.

"We are sorry, no more vacancies. You will be redirected to our auxiliary facility momentarily."

"What?" said Arthur, finding that he could speak, thanks to his jaws having left the "blissful numbness" stage for the "painful awareness" one.

"No more vacancy, please line up for redirection," the voice repeated, with a hint of annoyance.

"But we're frozen and tired and hungry and have bloody well paid for our room! We have the right to our room!"

"Well, to your room, not to other people's, right?" said Zaphod reasonably, hooking a hand around Trillian's shoulders.

"Please line up for redirection," the droid stated blankly.

Zaphod's other hands pushed Ford towards the line that was already lengthening.

"You don't want to wait until that one fills up too, now do you? Your monkey, sorry, ape wouldn't react well to that to that, I think. Unless you're tired of him, of course," pondered Zaphod, "in which case I could maybe celebrate your regaining of the little sense you have and accommodate you with me and Trill..."

Zaphod's rightmost hand slapped Zaphod's rightmost head sharply, maneuvered by Trillian's both hands.

"Zaphod? That was a 'no'," said Trillian calmly.

"May the couples please refrain from any preludial activities until shown to their room," advised the robotic voice.

Ford looked coldly at Zaphod.

"We'll be on our way, thanks."

"Please line up for redirection?" sighed the receptionist, its voice clearly at the end of its spectrum.

Arthur dragged his feet sullenly towards the line. Disgruntled guests already filled half of the lobby. Redirection seemed a rather common occurrence, thought Arthur, now that his sight had adjusted to non-white surfaces enough to read the signs indicating the Redirection Lane, the Redirection Waiting Room and the Redirection Resting Home - although he hoped he was simply misreading that last one [1].

He tried to channel all his anger and frustration into heat. All around him couples shuffled their various feet, paws and antennae, expressing discontent at being kept waiting in this heat.

Arthur failed. His anger was no match for the furs being strolled about by their owners (most of them firmly attached to the owners' skin).

"Look, Ford," he hissed belligerently. "This is a beach resort for _polar bears_!"

"Tropical bears," corrected Ford airily. Arthur gave him a fresh glare. He would soon run out of them and have to use the stale ones.

* * *

The walls were gleaming mirrors of liquid emerald; the lights, cleverly concealed within the smooth, towering walls, emerged in an aurora borealis of highlights and shadows; the floors were shining glaciers of the purest blues, reflecting here and there the crisp shapes of the furniture scattered about like gleaming vertical pools.

Arthur looked it all over and asked:

"Erm, Ford? Where's the bed?"

* * *

A more detailed inspection of the room revealed two potential large mostly horizontal surfaces that didn't appear to have an immediate purpose, and could therefore be used as sleeping areas. Both of them looked almost, but not quite, entirely unlike Arthur's expectation of a hotel bed.

"I think this is the bed," said Ford, pointing to the vaguely lung-shaped pool of what looked like gooey stuff, but felt like knitted gelatin, "and that's where I'm going to sleep," he pointed to an even more vaguely sofa-shaped lump of rock.

"Yes, you can tell by how it doesn't look like a bed in the slightest," said Arthur snippily.

An outside observer might have suspected him of delusions of hopefulness, in that he still hoped he would one day be able to use sarcasm against Ford. A less-informed observer would have concluded that sarcasm was just his natural response to adversity, and he, she or it would have been right.

"They must have misunderstood our 'specific requirements' form," said Arthur. "I knew we should have filled the blue, moving form, not the green round one."

"No, they got it just right," said Ford.

"You mean you asked for this?"

"Well, not this specifically, no. I asked for 'hot and soft sleeping accommodation'. You don't want to know what a regular and firm mattress looks like for a Zintagarian Arctic octopus."

"No," agreed Arthur, "I probably don't. Ford?"

"Yes."

"What I want to know is: why are we in a favourite resort for Tropical Bears and Arctic Octopuses?"

"Octopi," corrected the Babelfish automatically.

"Because it was a once in a lifetime opportunity?"

"I see. I have no trouble seeing why it was only applicable once, even if the tourist survives," said Arthur icily.

"Erm," Ford appeared to hold an interior struggle. "You can have the couch if you want?"

Arthur eyed him doubtfully, then sat himself on the cube-shaped couch.

"No, thank you. It reminds me of childhood."

"Wasn't that supposed to be a good thing?"

"Not if the parts it is reminiscent of involve tea over at an aunt's who owned the latest scream in Stone Age furniture."

"Ouch," Ford said in empathy, or at least a reasonably good imitation thereof. "At least there was tea?"

"Her eyesight wasn't all that good, and she liked to wash her teacups herself. The help did everything else, but her teacups were dear and precious to her."

Ford looked confused, as if he didn't know if he should start empathising or not.

Arthur sighed, releasing a precious tenth of a degree of heat in the room.

"They were filthy."

"Ah," said Ford.

"I know. I wasn't a hitchhiker then, and now, when I'd give anything for a cup of Aunt Eleanor's disgusting concoction, it can't be found anymore. Anywhere. Ever."

"Hey, I found the bar!" exclaimed Ford triumphantly. "Come on, Arthur, let's see what they have!"

Arthur accepted the distraction gladly.

"Geenan TonyX, this should be interesting! And Santraginous shellfish juice! And, and," Ford extracted more ingredients the names of which Arthur refused to remember, "Arthur, we could make a Pan-Santragean Gargleboomer!"

It would have been cruel to squash such a pure display of alcoholic glee.

"It does have alcohol, right?" asked Arthur.

Ford's grin radiated with manic joy.

"Lots and lots of it."

* * *

A few hours later the emptied recipients filled nicely an empty corner the size of Arthur's old living-room. It also became obvious that no more beverages of various alcoholic concentration could be extracted from the bar. Arthur and Ford decided in unison that they didn't really want more to drink, and would settle for an early night.

Arthur installed himself on the bed, although a more accurate description would be "immersed himself within the bed" or, even more accurately, "let himself sink into the bed".

Its folds seemed to engulf him reproachfully, cold and impersonal.

Minutes passed slowly, tip-toeing in the faint green gloom.

A deep, soul-wrenching sigh floated by from the couch-shaped object on which Ford was located; it tugged at Arthur's right ear and lodged itself in his left shoulder, which promptly began to cramp.

Arthur gave himself up as a bad job.

"Ford?"

"Yes, Arthur," Ford's sleepy, sad voice drifted back.

"I think this bed is big enough to eat, I mean seat the both of us."

The eagerness with which Ford jumped off the cube and into the knitted gelatin was in complete contrast to his exhausted sighs.

"Thanks, mate," he said brightly. "Nighty-night!"

* * *

This is what the Hitchhiker's Guide originally had to say about Triffelung:

_A strange planet, even by the average hitchhiker's standards, Triffelung is mostly known for its endless jungles, covering almost the entire surface of the planet and as a source for a peculiar species of lianas that need almost no processing and are in high demand in bondage circles._

_It is less well known for the globblings, or globbs, mostly because they have become a hush-hush affair. The globbs are related to mattresses, but mostly only in that they both thrive in swamps, and both can be used to sleep on._

_The globblings have a low sentience level and are very resistant to removal from habitat. There was a great hype at first about globb-made beds (incorrectly and offensively labeled as "globb mattresses"), until it was discovered that the state of general well-being experienced while sleeping on a globb was, in fact, a state of mind-numbing calm forcibly induced by the globbs to keep people quiet and happy. The globbs are not greedy, and are willing to share their bliss with the hosts to ensure their own peace and quiet._

_A few cases in which bliss-resistant hosts were rendered unconscious and/or psychologically maimed were discreetly shoved under the blanket (no pun intended), but they marked the beginning of decline for the industry. It was considered cruel to terminate the currently employed globbs, however, so they remained in use in obscure resorts for the incautious traveller. Hitchhikers beware._

Then the editor in charge slapped a "Too Long!" stamp on it, and the current edition of HHGttG says this:

_Triffelung: produces jungles, lianas and globbs._

* * *

Arthur jumped as warm strong vines encircled his body.

"Ford! Ford, I think the bed's trying to..."

"Shhtp, jjsm."

"Oh, they're your arms. Never mind then," said Arthur, as if falling asleep within Ford's arms was the most natural thing that could happen.

* * *

"Ford?"

"Yes, Arthur."

"Just checking."

* * *

"Arthur?"

"Yes, Ford."

"Take your socks off. They're too cold, I can't warm them and your feet at the same time."

* * *

"Ford?"

"..."

"Thanks, mate."

Ford grinned victoriously into the globb. There was no one to point to him that it looked more affectionate than smug. The globb globbened contentedly around them.

* * *

[1] He was, indeed, misreading them, although it was perhaps for the better. Universal Glyph Language was, despite its name, not much of a sign language at all, and much less universal; it lacked a fixed one-to-one correspondence to a meaning. Usually it differed little enough from sector to sector to keep beings that used it out of most embarrassing situations, at least in the Plural sectors. Arthur's confusion is easy to understand, as they were not, in fact, in a Plural sector. In the particular sector they were in the meaning of the sign would have been more accurately translated as the Redirection Cemetery.


End file.
